The Hindu Castes Their Law Religion And Customs

The following compilation was directed to be undertaken with the view of a fading information on points of Hindoo Law and Custom hitherto referred to Shastrees of courts or special witnesses pending judicial decesion. An obvious inconvenience resulting from this mode of investigation is the probability that the parties giving their opinion or evidence may be biassed by sinister influence. This consideration led Sir William Jones, so early as the year 1788, to propose the compilation of a Digest, on the model of the Pandects of Justinian, the execution of which, from the number of Sunskrit books to be consulted, and the discordant interpretations of different commentators, has hitherto been, for most practical purposes, a desideratum. Other arguments are not wanting to show the great utility of elucidation on points, whether of written law or unwritten custom reverened by numerous castes as law, on which, from the want of publications on the subject, little has hitherto been known, except by those gentlemen whose official practice may have enabled them to obtain local information. The Dharm Shaster, it is understood, is a collection of ancient treatises neither clear nor consistent in themselves, and now buried under a heap of more modern commentaries; the whole beyond the knowledge of perhaps the most learned Pundits, and every part wholly unknown to the people who live under it.